[assorted]

It's not going to work the same way for movies. I don't think that simply because we are already used to movies on demand through cable and the saturation point you write of has not happened.

Digital cable is now offering 50 or so films ON DEMAND at any point you want. HBO, Cinemax, Showtime, etc. are all offering 10-12 films each that you can start watching at the press of a button at no additional charge. In spite of this, my mother reports that my father has not DEcreased his movie watching habits.

When we all have our own home theater system, and we can download in under an hour any film we want to play in flawless quality (or at least as good as whatever is on the tv normally quality) and have it to immediately watch on our system in a surround mix... then i believe that threat could happen to movies.

but i'm not seeing that. plus, they are getting in early enough in the game that they will be able to control the technology a little better then the RIAA did (at least in terms of the next generation of home theater equipment, cable boxes, etc.).

also, what you have complained about in music (obscurity creating demand) has already happened for us film geeks in DVD. there are directors in films that were painfully hard to see that are now being released on dvd with pristine visual transfers that i formally had to look at as either a shitty 16mm print at the library or 3x taped over VHS tape i was lucky enough to come by. and these titles are all getting released, noone's sitting on any rights or releases.

to be a film fan right now is a great time, and it has nothing to do with these crap harry potter cams floating around. the entertainment giants ARE giving consumers what they want still.